Femina, A Work for Every Woman — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Femina, A Work for Every Woman
John Stuart Mill · en
The organs affected are then inaccessible to local treatment, so that
the disease invariably continues until the organs are more or less
destroyed by inflammation, which results in the tissues breaking down
into an abscess. In this stage of the disease it has become quite
the fashion to operate in this class of cases, offering as an excuse
a sure and speedy cure. Here I would interpose a word of warning to
sufferers belonging to this class, not to be too willing to comply
with surgical methods, because I know from careful observations, that
promises of this nature end often in disappointment and death, while an
intelligent conservative treatment can only disappoint but never kill,
and with patience and perseverance in the application of electricity
and hygienic rules of health, a cure is almost certain. The sick in
body and mind are often beguiled into operations of a very serious
nature, which are entirely unnecessary, because better results can be
accomplished by other methods of cure, in which the possibility of a
fatal termination is excluded.
Some women feel tired and languid from morning until night; they
feel as tired in the morning when they get up as they were in the
evening when they retired. If we tell them that it is entirely due
to negligence of their own persons in not using vaginal washings
regularly, they will undoubtedly feel surprised. In the great majority
of these cases, this is owing to putrefactive changes going on in the
cavity of the vagina. In the process of fermentative decomposition,
the so-called _ptomaines_ are developed; these are chemical poisons,
which are absorbed into the blood, and by their depressing influences
on the nervous system are the cause of the weakness and tired feeling.
There are no remedies which, when taken into the stomach, will do the
slightest good for this condition, and it is a waste of both time and
money to expect relief from drugs.
This can easily be remedied by cleanliness, so that the secretions are
not long enough retained in the vagina, to decompose and develop these
ptomaine poisons.